To appreciate the importance of this report keep in mind that one of
the biggest talking points of PMSC advocates is that the virtue of using
them is that they are cheaper than using full time government employees
and that private sector rates are cheaper than government salaries.
That is because they can be hired just for the task/mission, don't have
to be paid pensions and other benefits, et cetera. As talking points go
it's a good one and seemingly difficult to dispute; although when it
comes to using private military and security contractors in the field
there has not yet been much in the way of methodologically sound, peer
reviewed evidence to support it.

So POGO decided to fill the data gap, or lacuna, as an academic would
say. It compared total annual compensation for federal and private
sector employees with federal contractor billing rates in order to
determine whether the current costs of federal service contracting
serves the public interest.